Having asked about vibration pads for covered hoppers…
I just wonder how many people realise that ore cars were at one time fitted with gussetted holes in the sides for crews to insert steam lances to thaw out the loads prior to unloading?
I have drawings for these somewhere. I also have an earlier car spec (c1880s) for ore cars which required them to be strong enough to withstand the load being loosened for discharge by the insertion of gunpowder charges in holes driven by pins with sledge hammers. This would be fun to model!
Question… did they stop using steam lances and, if so, how did they unload the cars in cold/wet weather?
Dave, I think the main factor that led to the demise of lances and ore-steaming was the advent of pelletized ore. I’ve heard tales of crews having a bugger of a time getting frozen “natural” ore out of the cars as long as it was being shipped. I’ve also heard the “explosives legend”.
Dorin’s “The Lake Superior Iron Ore Railroads” has some photos of this “frantic work” being done in Duluth or Two harbors, and the LS&I had a heating shed for warming ore cars before they were placed on the dock in Marquette. But it was most likely the advent of pelletized ore that finally made it unnecessary.
I would have to ask my father-in-law about this. He has worked at the Tilden mine pretty much his entire working career. I always think it is awesome when we get a chance to visit him at the mine. That is one impressive hole in the Earth!!
Using steam to thaw out ore was something done into early winter. Most of the natural ore moved from rail to lake boats in the April to November time frame at Duluth/Superior. I remember seeing ore cars being ‘steam lanced’ in the 60’s.
The taconite pellets were loaded ‘hot’ into the ore cars even in winter. They went ‘all rail’ or moved to the Twin Ports docks and were unloaded into tall pellet piles until the shipping season started. The raw natural ore trains ended around Nov/Dec when the harbors on the Great Lakes froze up. Pellets moved year round. I have seen pellets freeze up in a car, but they usually will self dump with a ‘car shaker’ on the docks(DM&IR). The GN ore dock had a heated ‘thaw shed’ and car dumper at ground level, and the pellets were moved to the dock by conveyor. There is still some natural ore movements, but many times it is an ‘all rail’ operation(to a warmer climate). Dock workers that used the steam lances and ‘poke’ rods wore harness equipment with cables so they did not fall into the dock pockets when the ore finally broke free. Raw ore can be ‘sticky’ even in summer…
Dave, the steel plant where I worked used steam lances on the in-plant hoppers that they used for shipping coke from storage to the blast furnace stock house. I don’t know if the cars had fittings for this purpose, or if they just opened the hopper doors and stuck the lance in. Obviously, hot coke wouldn’t need this assistance, but the cars were sometimes used for coke storage, and might sit for some time in some pretty crappy weather conditions. I have a steam plant near my loco shops and servicing facility, and, when I build the overhead piping system, I plan to include a drop for a steam lance in the coaling tower dump shed.
That wasn’t a legend. There’s no way I’ll find my copy of the car spec at present but I took it from a professional rail journal of the era. It was part of a real invitation for car builders to tender for a contract. It helped me realise both what rotten weather you have up around the Great lakes and how fortunate we are to sit on the end of the Atlantic conveyor / Gulf Stream → North Atlantic Drift.
Dr Wayne… Your pics are causing a problem… I’m taking on a permanent shade of green… and it’s your pics not lack of a bath! [(-D]
What was that movie about the guy who had his wife kidnapped and everybody started getting killed where the cop in charge was pregnant? Two things struck me… how everywhere was cold and everybody just kept eating… oh, and I don’t mix wood chippers with people that don’t like me…
Dave the movie was Fargo. It’s a pretty good flick.
The steaming of ore cars was a real headach for the railroads. The DM&IR had a heating shed in two harbors for heating the ore cars. It used radiant heat to do the job. The bigger problem was when the ore froze in the dock pockets. Then they were dealing with up to 300 tons of the stuff. Pellitizing solved a world of problems.
Anything hauled in open hoppers in winter, and anything wet hauled in closed hoppers, will eventually freeze when it gets cold. Using oil fired thawing pits between the rails, and placed in cheap metal buildings, is much cheaper to build and maintain than building a steam boiler, that still requires coal or oil to fire it, to provide steam to thaw cars. That method also does not introduce more water that adds weight and can also refreeze in the load.
This just demands pics and examples of working! Where does it happen? Anyone modelled it? I would guess that a “bad burn” would leave huge streaks of oily soot at least around the hopper bays if not up the sides…?
To segue from this topic to another related topic, when Lake Superior froze over and ore could no longer be shipped from the ore mines in Minnesota, the DM&IR would lease their Yellowstones to the D&RGW. In a memo to the DM&IR the D&RGW said that the Yellowstones were the finest locomotives they had ever operated on their system.